Cold War Never Got Hotter Than This Series

Thirty years ago this week, Canada’s top NHL players faced off against a team of the Soviet Union’s best in an eight-game series remembered as much for its vicious incidents as for Paul Henderson’s goal in the closing moments of Game 8. Thanks to Henderson, the Canadians won the Summit Series, 4-3-1.

After 30 years, Bobby Clarke’s two-handed slash that broke the ankle of Valery Kharlamov in Game 6 stands out as the ugliest of the attacks. Clarke, who was acting on the orders of assistant coach John Ferguson, has never apologized for his hatchet job on Kharlamov, perhaps the Soviets’ best player in the series.

Henderson, who remains a national hero in the Great White North, said recently that Clarke’s actions were akin to “shooting a guy in the hallway.”

“That’s no way to win a hockey game,” Henderson told the National Post, a Canadian newspaper. “Can you imagine a golfer going out and whacking a guy in the leg? Can you imagine a tennis player doing that?”

Said Clarke: “I was young and the series was a war. It was a dirty series. We did a lot of dirty things to them and they did a lot of dirty things to us. It got to that level for all of us. It got crazy out there.”

Trivia time: As he had been in the Summit Series against Canada, Vladislav Tretiak was in goal for the Soviets when they faced the United States in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. But he was not in net for the final two periods of the “Miracle on Ice.” Who was?

Warming up for the off-season: Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times doesn’t fault Mariner Manager Lou Piniella for losing his cool last week:

“You know that first-base bag Piniella shotput down the right-field line last Wednesday? My guess is, he saw Mariner CEO Howard Lincoln’s face on it.... When there was a chance to get help, ownership didn’t. And that has been the rash under Piniella’s collar since the July 31 trade deadline.”

Team player? Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald on Tiger Woods: “There will always be an I in Tiger. That single-mindedness is what drove him to be the best player on the planet. For him, it’s all about winning tournaments, making money and cementing his place in history. To steal a phrase often used with the late Ted Williams, it’s all about being called the greatest golfer who ever lived.

“Playing for Team USA doesn’t exactly fit into any of those categories because Tiger alone doesn’t control the outcome in the Ryder Cup. He could win every match he plays and still lose.”

Trivia answer: Vladimir Myshkin replaced Tretiak with the score, 2-2, and one second left in the first period. The U.S. went on to win, 4-3.

And finally: Bison Dele (a.k.a. Brian Williams), the NBA player who is missing and presumed dead in the South Pacific, was a rabid fan of the film “Pulp Fiction,” recalled Mike Monroe of Foxsports.com:

“I keep remembering the morning in 1994 when a gifted power forward named Brian Williams burst into the locker room at McNichols Sports Arena before a practice session. He was bubbling with enthusiasm, anxious to tell anyone and everyone he had just seen the greatest film ever made.”

Dele recited one passage “word for word, after having seen the film not once or twice the previous evening, but three times.”